ISIS Press Release 16/08/05
GMOs and Human
Health
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho told the People's
Health Assembly that GM is
proving bad for health because it goes against
the grain of the new genetics science
A GMO or genetically modified
organism is one whose natural genetic material
has been modified by having synthetic genetic
material inserted into it. That is how we have GM
crops grown for food and feed, for fibre and for
a range of pharmaceuticals and industrial
products in the latest offering, if we don't
manage to stop it.
Maybe you have heard the mantra
from certain scientists that GM food is perfectly
safe because the technology is so very precise
and wonderful and the regulation the strictest in
the world; that GM is good for biodiversity,
increases yield, reduces pesticide use, and so
on. All of the claims have been falsified, with
data collected by the US Department of
Agriculture and by independent scientists .
The World Health Organization
has just issued a report, Modern food
biotechnology, human health and development: an
evidence-based study (23 June 2005) claiming
that although there may be potential risks
involved in the use of GMOs, the GM crops that
are grown today are not likely to present health
risks.
Yet there has been a string of
incidents indicating GM food and feed are far
from safe. These include studies carried out by
biotech companies producing the GM crops, which
they have kept secret under confidential business
information.
- Kidney and blood
abnormalities in rats fed one of
Monsanto's GM maize in Monsanto's secret
dossier.
- Villagers in the south of
the Philippines who suffered mysterious
illnesses when another GM maize came into
flower in a nearby field two years in a
row. Antibodies to the Bt protein
inserted into the GM maize were found in
the villagers.
- A dozen cows that died
after eating a third GM maize made by
Syngenta, and others in the herd had to
be slaughtered because of mysterious
illnesses. Autopsies failed to be carried
out, which is why Greenpeace and farmers
are demonstrating in front of the Robert
Koch Institute
- Senior scientist Arpad
Pusztai and colleagues in Scotland found
young rats fed GM potatoes ended up with
damage in every organ system; the most
dramatic being an increase in thickness
of the stomach lining to twice that in
controls. Scientists in Egypt found
similar effects in mice fed GM potatoes
with another gene.
- The US Food and Drug
Administration had data dating back to
early 1990s that rats fed GM tomatoes had
developed small holes in their stomach.
To cut a long story short,
different species of GM food and feed crops with
different genes had adversely affected several
species of animals. You don't have to be a
scientific genius to see that there may be
something in the genetic engineering process
itself that's harmful .
So what's wrong with GMOs?
First, new genes and
combinations of genes made in the laboratory,
which have never existed in billions of years of
evolution, are being introduced into our food
chain.
Allergies and other toxicities
come to mind. In fact, 22 out of 33 proteins
incorporated into GM crops were found to have
similarities to known allergens, and are
therefore suspected allergens.
The synthetic genetic
material are introduced into the cells of
organisms with invasive methods that are
uncontrollable, unreliable and unpredictable, and
far from precise.
It ends up damaging the natural
genetic material of the organism with many
unpredictable, unintended effects, including
gross abnormalities that you can see, and
metabolic changes that may be toxic that you
can't see.
Many foreign synthetic
genes are copies of those from bacteria and
viruses that cause diseases.
They also contain antibiotic
resistance marker genes to help track the
movements of the foreign gene inserts and select
for cells that have taken up the foreign genes.
Right from the beginning, in
the mid1970s, geneticists themselves have worried
that releasing those synthetic genetic material
runs the risk of creating new viruses and
bacteria that cause diseases, and spreading
antibiotic resistance to make infections
untreatable. As the result of the Asilomar
Declaration, a moratorium was imposed.
Unfortunately, the moratorium was short-lived, as
geneticists were in a hurry for commercial
exploitation of genetic engineering.
The dangers arise because
the genetic material persists long after the
cells or organism is dead, and can be taken up by
bacteria and viruses that are in all environments
This process - called
horizontal gene transfer and recombination - is
the main route to creating dangerous pathogens.
Genetic engineering is
nothing if not greatly enhanced horizontal gene
transfer and recombination, and nasty surprises
have already been sprung.
Researchers in Australia
accidentally' transformed a harmless
mousepox virus into a lethal pathogen that killed
all the mice, even those that were supposed to be
resistant to the virus. Headlines in the New
Scientist editorial: The Genie is out,
Biotech has just sprung a nasty surprise. Next
time, it could be catastrophic.
The lead article continued in
the same vein: Disaster in the making. An
engineered mouse virus leaves us one step away
from the ultimate bioweapon.
The researchers added a gene
coding for an immune signalling molecule to the
virus, which they thought would boost antibody
production; instead, it suppressed immune
responses. The researchers had previously put the
same gene into a vaccinia virus and found it
delayed the clearance of virus from the animals,
so it may well have the same immune suppressive
effects for all viruses. Imagine what would
happen if this gene ever got into a smallpox
virus!
More surprisingly, researchers
at the University of California in Berkeley found
that disrupting a set of disease-causing genes in
Mycobacterium tuberculosis , the
tuberculosis bacterium, resulted in a
hyper-virulent mutant strain that killed all the
mice by 41 weeks, while all the control mice
exposed to the unmodified bacterium survived.
There is yet another insidious
danger.
The synthetic genes
created for genetic modification are designed to
cross species barriers and to jump into the
natural genetic material of cells. Such
constructs jumping into the natural genetic
material of human cells can trigger cancer .
This is not just a theoretical
possibility. It has happened in gene therapy,
which is genetic modification of human cells.
In 2000, researchers in the
Neckar Hospital in Paris, France treated infants
with X- linked Severe Combined Immune Deficiency
apparently successfully by isolating bone marrow
cells from the patients, applying gene therapy,
and then injecting the genetically modified cells
back into the patients. But since 2002, 3 infants
have developed leukaemia. One child has died. The
foreign synthetic gene has inserted near a human
gene that controls cell division, making it
overactive, resulting in uncontrollable
multiplication of the white blood cells.
I have only scratched the
surface of the problems and hazards of genetic
modification. But you can already see that there
has been a massive campaign of misinformation and
disinformation on the part of the GM proponents.
The greatest danger, I
think, is the mindset of the GM proponents
Genetic engineering of plants
and animals began in the mid 1970s under the
illusion that the genetic material is constant
and static and the characteristics of organisms
are hardwired in their genes. One gene determines
one characteristic. But geneticists soon
discovered to their great surprise that the
genetic material is dynamic and fluid, in that
both the expression and structure of genes are
constantly changing under the influence of the
environment. Geneticists have coined the term,
the fluid genome, which encapsulated
this major paradigm change. The genome is the
totality of all the genetic material in an
organism.
The processes responsible for
the fluid genome are precisely orchestrated by
the organism as a whole in a dance of life that's
necessary for survival. In contrast, genetic
engineering in the lab is crude, imprecise and
invasive. The rogue genes inserted into a genome
to make a GMO can land anywhere in any form and
has a tendency to be unstable, basically because
these rogue genes do not know the language of the
dance. Genetic engineers haven't learned to dance
with life.
That is why dozens of prominent
scientists from seven countries launched
ourselves as the Independent Science Panel, to
overcome the campaign of disinformation from
pro-GM scientists who are working to promote the
corporate agenda, and to reclaim science for the
public good. We compiled all the evidence against
GM crops as well as the evidence on the successes
and benefits of all forms of sustainable non-GM
agriculture. Based on this evidence, we are
calling for a ban on the environmental releases
of GM crops and a comprehensive shift to
sustainable agriculture. I hope the Assembly will
support this call!
Plenary lecture to the People's
Health Assembly 2, 17-22 July 2005, Cuenca,
Ecuador. For further information please visit the
Institute of Science in Society website: www.i-sis.org.uk
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